Cgolf

Trash them, because the bait monkey always has me buying more than I can use.

Have you ordered from this place? A couple of blanks are catching my attention.

Got my smelly stuff order in today;) Can't wait till May rolls around!

The bummer is they seem to be only 50 cents cheaper on the smaller SB and a buck cheaper on the 8.0 SB. Will be curious to see if other stores get them too. They really need to do the RES in the clear too. As for other brands, I would take a 20 pack of clear bandit 100s

Just saw that Cabela's is now carrying unpainted strike King cranks, unfortunately not the RES. I am curious though how these would fish unpainted in clear water? Any thoughts?

In the case of the Hudds and Matt Lures I am going to assume that you have some pauses in the retrieves. During the pauses it could for sure help, and the scent will leave a trail as the baits move through the water. I don't know how sensitive a bass sense of smell is, probably not like a shark and blood, but they can smell. I know guys that troll cranks for muskies and walleyes and swear to me that the baits with scent draw in more fish.

I used atlas mikes gel scent for years and have been using liquid mayhem for the last year and a half on 90% of my soft baits and crankbaits. Have seen many days where having the scent is the difference of getting fish in the boat and getting skunked.

I would actually take you on, my current clear water lake has visibility 10-15 feet depending on the year and I tried both fireline and fireline with a 6 foot flouro leader with a swim senko on a slider head that had to sit dead for 5 seconds and the catch rate was the same. This was N WI bass, so maybe that helps me out a bit. Many years ago I used to pier fish Geneva Lake a lot and not knowing any better would catch fish on Trilene solar XT. Geneva is the clearest lake I have seen to date, gin comes to mind. Sometimes I think we give the fish too much credit, but I will admit that I generally look for more active fish, so my presentations may be on the quicker side than others. For soft baits, colors are smoke red or purple in sun and flat water and water red or green pumpkin with overcast skies and choppy water with any sun conditions. The baits are pretty simple lots of tubes and grubs, Anglers choice Killshots on a slider spider head and I dabble with finesse worms and swimbaits. Most of my fish come on the first three baits listed. Cranks are pretty simple, same that I throw everywhere, perhaps with some more natural colors. Red seemed to be a hot color last year, and it better be again since I stocked up on red cranks. Spinnerbaits with silver blades work really well too. My favorite skirt color is the SK bleeding minnow, white, red, smoke. Swim jigs are something I want to work more with in the future. I have had luck with them, but fall back to the usual suspects instead of working with them.

I actually did really well with the scatter crank on my local river in 1 to 4 feet of water. The current is pretty swift and it seemed to handle it just fine. The only thing I have noticed is you can't crank them super fast.

I have done both the Plano guide series and Cabela's bags for a lot cheaper and had no issues and the hard bottoms keep the boxes dry when set on the deck of a boat that just got drenched by rain or dew. The bag looks cool, but the price is pretty high. I am not sure if the bottom on that bag is waterproof, reading the description I would guess yes, but not sure.

Its new on TW called the American originals G5, haven't ordered one yet.

Did see the Luck E Strike came out with a more expensive wart imitation. Since with this style bait it sounds as if inconsistency is good, curious about these. I have stayed away from this brand because I haven't heard great things about them, but these caught my eye. Looking at the new warts though they have some cool colors.

Cool I might throw some hooks on them and try them around sdocks this spring when the weeds aren't up yet and I won't need to cast very far.

With all the wart talk, I went back in the basement and grabbed these three thin fins. What's the scoop on these things, good bad or other? I also have some Risto Raps somewhere too.

I agree that all bodies of water especially clear lakes have their own color patterns that develop. One lake I fish I could probably take two colors and be good for the week. It is a heavy bluegill lake. Flat water with some sun, smoke purple and smoke red are money. Overcast or heavy chop, water red is the hot color. My guess is these colors match the gills in the different light conditions. To the op you figured out what they are keying and it sounds like rather quickly, and the fish aren't as picky as the ones I chase. One thing you could do is keep a log and see if your catch rates change in sun, overcast, or choppy when sunny. Choppy water seems to break up the light making bait selection similar to overcast conditions. The log will help you dial in the baits to use each time you go out.

I am kinda thinking I will use the bag for on the water and fishing trips and the Plano for bulk storage at home. While I don't have a monster jig collection, I think that I have enough that if they sat for a while I might be concerned about the weed guards. I do have holes in the bags, but I could make them bigger. On the water I have two plastic shoe boxes with drain holes in the bottom to put used non Zman plastics in to dry and so I don't step on them when fishing barefoot. The plano box is really cool, but I am trying to downsize on the water, with a 16' narrow beamed boat, tackle and rod storage on the water is a big deal for me. I ditched the spinnerbait box for a similar setup, which got me to thinking I should do the same with jigs. The spinner baits are stored in a box not the bags between trips. What brand of jigs are those? I do like the craw skirts, do you use a trailer with them, and if so what style?

I have been storing my jigs in a Plano box and have been reasonably happy with it. For some reason I wanted a change. What I am looking at doing is putting 6-7 jigs to a quart size freezer bag and roll the up a bit. I have a tackle logic bag that seems to hold them well. This should save me some space. My my concerns are two, will this damage the weed guard or will the skirts get funky stored packed in a bag like that?

I usually start out crankin and when the bite either dies down or they aren't buying the crank I switch to soft plastics. Exceptions are the interior of thick reed beds, will toss cranks carefully inside sparse reed beds, once the weeds have taken hold plastics all the way and those cool flat sunup trips when the fish aren't quite awake yet. One thing that shocked me last year was the RES bite on our third cold front of the week. Bass were active and the musky and pike were jumping and were trying to eat our lures as we were lifting them out of the water. Not sure I will ever see the fish that active/out of their mind again.

Yum Crawbug, with the Ned rig the last couple of years my number 1 all time river bait has been on the shelf. Learning from others, I won't allow myself to bench the Bandit 100, it is my number 2 river bait and might move up to number one if the crawbug stays on the bench, also has done well on the lakes too.

Slider fishin and lunkers eat night crawlers are a couple of good books I own and have read a couple of times.

Daiwa Laguna for 44 on Amazon and Berk big game backing line from the TW 25 days sale. Hoping this reel will be a workhorse for years. Liked the way the one we bought my father in law fished, time will tell.

Small baits do catch big fish, and to be honest the more pressure the waters see can drive this too. We really see it up here with Musky, probably the most pressured fish on my waters, where the big fish are hitting bass baits as much if not more than musky sized offerings. Japan and out west are other good examples of where most of our finesse rigs were born. So yeh I expect a big fish on little baits just as I am not surprised when I get dinks on the KVD 8.0 squarebill. My PB smallie and numerous big catches every year come on the Ned rig.

Agreed it isn't a Ned even the slider and 2.5" Zinkerz is something else, not sure what it should be called, but it to catches fish. I just like that type of weedless setup vs the wire weedguard on the Ned heads which hasn't worked for me with the local vegatation.

Then I am stuck with a 1 inch piece Zinkerz I have to toss away. I love the Zinkerz not only because you get 12 baits out of a pack, but the material just seems better, tougher and more porous, than the TRD. Since I have 2 packs of the Big TRD I will try them around docks and if that works I may cut the Zinkerz, or heck go with the full 5" bait on the slider and see how it goes. I see myself as more of a rebel, messing with the rig and my most popular bait not being a Zman product.

This is one that should be married, it worked really well for me last year, the shorter Zinkerz. I also caught fish on it on the river too.